The United States’ withdrawal from the World Health Organization became official Thursday, formalizing a fissure between the Trump administration and the Geneva-based global health agency that dates back to the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Thursday marks the one-year anniversary of the date on which the WHO was informed that President Trump had decreed that the U.S. would terminate its membership in the organization, something he tried to do during his first term in office. According to a joint congressional resolution passed in 1948 to allow the United States to join the WHO, the country had to give a year’s notice before withdrawing. (The joint resolution also stipulated that the country had to pay outstanding bills before leaving, a condition that has not been met.)

After a year of ongoing measles outbreaks that have sickened more than 2,400 people, the United States is poised to lose its status as a measles-free country. However, the newly appointed principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ralph Abraham, said he was unbothered by the prospect at a briefing for journalists this week.

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Scott Rivkees still remembers two cases from his first week as a pediatric intern at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1982.

The first was a patient with chickenpox or varicella encephalitis, a virus that causes brain inflammation. The second was a child with bacterial meningitis, a severe infection that causes inflammation of the membranes around the brain and spinal cord. The infection can produce seizures and deafness and lead to death.

It’s been a year since a measles outbreak began in West Texas, and international health authorities say they plan to meet in April to determine if the U.S. has lost its measles-free designation.

Experts fear the vaccine-preventable virus has regained a foothold and that the U.S. may soon follow Canada in losing the achievement of having eliminated it.

The reevaluation is largely symbolic and hinges on whether a single measles chain has spread uninterrupted within the U.S. for at least 12 months.

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On Jan. 5, Brown University Health — the largest hospital system in Rhode Island — announced that all of their facilities would require patients, visitors and staff to wear a N95 or Level 2 surgical mask. The new guidelines, effective Jan. 6, follow increased rates of respiratory viruses in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

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It has been a full year since one of the worst measles outbreaks in recent U.S. history began ripping through West Texas. The highly infectious disease has continued to burn across multiple U.S. states, Mexico and Canada since Texas reported an outbreak in children in January 2025. The U.S. had been virtually free of the disease for more than a quarter-century thanks to highly effective and safe vaccines, but now experts say we’re on track to losing that status if officials determine measles has spread continuously for a year.

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Flu cases are ticking down, but experts warn the U.S. isn’t out of the woods yet. Fifteen more children died from the flu in the week ending Jan. 10, bringing the total of pediatric deaths to 32.

On Friday, the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an over 18% drop in confirmed flu cases, compared to the previous week. Doctor visits for respiratory illnesses also decreased by more than 5% and hospitalization rates went down by nearly 55%. Influenza deaths rose by 2%.

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Today, we’re joined by sociologist Vivek Chibber, the provocative scholar and social critic who has a pointed critique of the modern day Left. The host of the Confronting Capitalism podcast joins us and argues that their management of institutions—including academia, media, the Democratic Party, and even public health—is completely out of touch with the lives and struggles of working and middle-class Americans. We discuss how this disconnect is fueling the widespread distrust of experts and institutions today, as well as Chibber's critique of the MAHA movement and its alliance with MAGA.

We also speak with public health professor and emergency physician Craig Spencer to explore how these critiques play out in the health space —on public health, cuts to scientific research, and the shrinking safety nets under the Trump administration. Finally, we discuss what, if anything, can be done to rebuild trust within communities that feel left behind, keying off of polling showing dramatic bipartisan support of the idea that good healthcare is a human right.

Things were going to change in public health. That much was certain after President Donald Trump chose Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his secretary of health. One contributor to the Bulletin compared Kennedy, who built a career sowing distrust of vaccines, to Trofim Lysenko, the Soviet official who embraced pseudoscientific agricultural practices and sparked widespread famine, or Thabo Mbeki, the South African president who rejected the science of HIV/AIDS and exacerbated the disease’s devasting toll in that country. Yet Kennedy has managed to shock health experts.

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Maybe you’ve been sitting in church or listening to a lecture that, though provocative, sends you into a dozing dreamland, despite getting plenty of sleep the night before. Or maybe you’ve fought to stay awake during a long car ride. These experiences often have as their root cause a common factor — poor indoor air quality caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide because of poor ventilation.

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Developing a vaccine is one challenge. Delivering it to billions is another entirely. Dr. Seth Berkley – one of the most influential leaders in global health and the former CEO of Gavi – joins us to unpack his new book Fair Doses, which reveals the hidden systems, politics, and economics behind global immunization.

Under his leadership, Gavi was the largest vaccine organization in the world, raising $20 billion in funding, delivering 7 billion vaccine doses, and immunizing 3 billion children, transforming global access and reshaping the vaccine market for low-income countries. Dr. Berkley explains why vaccine mistrust has persisted for centuries, and why today’s misinformation environment is uniquely dangerous. He details how Gavi’s alliance model mobilized WHO, UNICEF, governments, and manufacturers to build the largest vaccine delivery network in history. We also go inside COVAX, from vaccine nationalism to the supply-chain barriers that defined the global COVID-19 response. Finally, Dr. Berkley looks ahead to how mRNA, synthetic biology, and AI could radically accelerate our ability to respond to the pandemics to come.

Much of the country is facing record flu cases thanks to a new strain of the virus. And the “subclade K” variant is likely already here in Spokane.

The new strain formed last year as influenza A’s H2N3 virus mutated. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the mutated form of the virus accounts for 91.2% of flu present in the United States. The surprise variant was not factored into this year’s flu vaccine, so the vaccine may be less effective because of it.

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Flu activity in Texas has reached a “very high” level for the first time this season, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with emergency room visits climbing sharply in recent weeks.

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(TNND) — President Donald Trump celebrated a revision to the government's recommendations for childhood vaccinations that he said would "no longer require 72 'jabs' for our beautiful, healthy children."

But leading medical groups sounded an alarm over the changes as arbitrary and dangerous.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now recommending routine vaccinations against 11 diseases, down from 17 as of the end of 2024.

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The United States has seen the number of influenza cases climb significantly in December, coming after the most severe flu season since 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

It’s not yet clear whether there will be an increase in the total number of people who get the flu this season – or whether more people just got it at once in December – but more than 3,100 people died from the virus in the US in the year ending August 2025, according to the latest data from the CDC.
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For much of human history, infectious diseases were the main causes of morbidity and mortality. The sciences of public health, epidemiology, microbiology, and vaccine and drug development have dramatically reduced the risks associated with these diseases such that life expectancies in high income countries have increased by close to 40 years over the last century, principally due to a reduction in child deaths from infectious diseases. Today, chronic diseases are the main cause of mortality and are expected to increase over time.

Cases of influenza in the United States are rising, driven by a new strain that public health officials worry current vaccines may not protect against as effectively.

Health officials and researchers say that although the flu season has not reached its peak, the spike in cases is not historically unusual — and they stress vaccines probably still offer protection against the worst effects of the strain.

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The United States, a nation of 343 million people with a complex and overburdened health care system, is poised to adopt the childhood vaccine recommendations used in Denmark, a country of six million with universal health care. The decision has alarmed public health experts in both countries.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary, is expected to announce the move in the new year. It would reduce the number of immunizations for American children to 10 from 17, radically changing the recommended vaccines without the deliberative process that the United States has relied on for decades.

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Flu is surging across the United States amid a busy holiday travel time.

The state of New York is among those most heavily hit. For the week ending Dec. 20, the state reported its highest number of positive flu cases (71,123) ever recorded in a single week, according to the New York State Department of Health. That represented an increase of 38% over the previous week, the department said.

New York is one of 14 states that reported high or very high activity of outpatient visits to health care providers for influenza-like illnesses for the week ending Dec. 13, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The District of Columbia, New York City and Puerto Rico have also registered high or very high flu-like cases, the agency says.

Seth Berkley, MD, an infectious disease epidemiologist, was the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance from 2011 to 2023; a co-founder of COVAX, which developed, manufactured, and distributed COVID-19 vaccines; and the founder and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

Dr. Berkley spoke to Infectious Disease Special Edition about his new book, “Fair Doses: An Insider’s Story of the Pandemic and the Global Fight for Vaccine Equity.”

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Cost-effective ways exist to improve your indoor air quality that will reduce your COVID and flu risk, lower your cancer and lung disease risk, and eliminate headaches and sleepiness caused by poor ventilation.

Maybe you’ve been sitting in church or listening to a lecture that, though provocative, sends you into a dozing dreamland, despite getting plenty of sleep the night before. Or maybe you’ve fought to stay awake during a long car ride. These experiences often have as their root cause a common factor – poor indoor air quality caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide because of poor ventilation.

The U.S. reportedly plans to overhaul the country’s childhood vaccine schedule. The move, first reported by CNN, would change how many vaccines to protect against various diseases children get and when they receive those immunizations.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., secretary of health and human services, is a longtime vaccine skeptic and supports altering the vaccine schedule. Recommendations for several vaccines that are currently given routinely to children in the U.S.—including shots for rotavirus, varicella (chickenpox), hepatitis A, meningococcal bacteria, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)—could be scrapped entirely under the plans, according to CNN.

Flu season comes around every year, but a new strain is leading many global health experts to worry that this round may be particularly severe. The strain—a version of the influenza A(H3N2) virus—first appeared in surveillance reports in June, 4 months after the 2025-2026 influenza vaccine formulation had already been determined, and has been associated with earlier waves of influenza outbreaks in Canada, Japan, and the UK.

The latest data on respiratory illness in the United States shows that shoppers and merry-makers are spreading more than just holiday cheer: They’re also passing around germs. In many cases, it’s a new virus variant that’s been causing early and busy flu seasons in Asia, Australia and Europe.

The US is on the cusp of finding out what this flu variant, called subclade K, will do. For the week ending December 6 — the first full week after the Thanksgiving holiday — the proportion of doctor’s visits for symptoms including fever plus a cough or sore throat rose to 3.2%, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When Susan Monarez was sworn in to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the country’s premier public-health agency, many researchers across the country breathed a sigh of relief.

Trained as a microbiologist and immunologist, Monarez had been a non-partisan government scientist for nearly 20 years. She was an unexpectedly uncontroversial choice by US President Donald Trump, who had previously put forward (but later withdrew the nomination for) Dave Weldon, a physician and vaccine sceptic who worked as a Republican member of Congress from 1995 to 2009.

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Dr. Brian Chow, an infectious disease specialist, is among the most qualified people in the country to speak about the importance of hepatitis B vaccinations.

He received advanced training at Brown University and was an attending physician at Tufts Medical Center. While there, he witnessed a young patient die of liver cancer that stemmed from a hepatitis B infection, a death that could have been prevented had the man received a common vaccine for the disease as a baby.

Prof Wilmot James during a meeting in Mexico with the Helena Group on the intersections between synthetic biology and artificial intelligence. Wilmot has been at the forefront of the fight pandemics, catastrophes and biological warfare.

In the 1980s, researchers tested a new hepatitis B vaccine candidate on over 10,000 people, finding it well tolerated with no reports of serious adverse events. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Engerix-B to prevent potentially deadly hepatitis B infections in 1989. In 1986, it had approved another vaccine Recombivax HB; its label points to studies involving more than 1,000 people. The US government has been recommending these vaccines for all newborns since 1991 and cases of hepatitis B in people 19 years old and younger have dropped 99 percent since it did. Yet despite this efficacy and the numerous safety studies conducted before after the vaccines were licensed, anti-vaccine activists have targeted the long-used immunizations as inadequately researched. The lawyer Aaron Siri, who has worked closely for and with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for years, sought in 2020, for instance, to have the licenses for the vaccines suspended or withdrawn.

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Hear from the co-chairs of the G20 High-Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (HLIP) as they share insights from their new report, Closing the Deal: Financing Our Security Against Pandemic Threats, which outlines practical and bold steps to take pandemic threats off the table.

The G20 first established the Panel in 2021 to rethink how global preparedness is financed. This year, the Panel was reconvened by the South Africa G20 Presidency under the Joint Finance and Health Task Force to address the global pandemic financing gap at a time of profound challenges for global health and health security. The U.S. National Academy of Medicine served as the Panel’s Secretariat.

As the global health architecture undergoes major changes, drivers of pandemic risk continue to rise. The next pandemic is not a theoretical concern—it could happen at any time. Yet, despite mounting threats, countries remain severely underinvested in pandemic preparedness and response. The Panel’s new report serves as a blueprint for rapid, coordinated action.

In this virtual public briefing, hear about the Panel’s five key recommendations and learn what actions can be taken now to prevent biological catastrophe and achieve a high return on investment in global health security.

Vaccines have greatly improved public health, but their continued use is being hampered by misinformation, distrust, and inequity. On this episode, Dr. Seth Berkley discussed his book, Fair Doses.

COVID-19 cases are on the rise in 17 states, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The states with either "growing" or "likely growing" cases of COVID-19 were situated in the Midwest and Northeast of the country.

The CDC noted in its report though that its current estimates may be impacted by "holiday reporting effects and should be interpreted with greater uncertainty."

On this episode of "Halteres Presents", hosts Mickey Urdea and Rich Thayer are sitting down with Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, the Director of the Pandemic Center and Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health, to comb through the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and to assess America's readiness for pathogens both natural and from a bioterrorism weapon. This at times sobering conversation covering surveillance methods to curtail disease outbreaks, how to combat health-related misinformation, and improving American prosperity through global health security initiatives can hopefully kickstart the precautions necessary to prevent the worst case scenarios. Please enjoy this episode of "Halteres Presents".

Africa is home to the youngest population on Earth. By 2060, nearly 800 million children will live on the continent – an extraordinary demographic force that should be our greatest asset. But a landmark new study published this month in PLOS Global Public Health delivers a stark reality check: the children’s hospitals responsible for caring for this generation are stretched, strained and in many places simply not equipped to meet their needs.

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Leveraging Data for High-Impact Health Security Investment 1
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant slowdown in economic growth across Africa and triggered widespread debt distress, leaving many countries struggling to recover. Growth is expected to remain sluggish for several years, contributing to significant reductions in health spending. Official development assistance (ODA) has dropped 70 percent since 2021, even as disease outbreaks have surged by more than 40 percent between 2022 and 2024. These trends place overwhelming strain on health systems across the continent.

The combination of economic slowdown and reductions in ODA is unfolding in a time of increasing​​ biological threats. Climate change disproportionately impacts African countries, driving a surge in infectious disease outbreaks across the continent. At the same time, rapid technological advances are lowering barriers to the misuse of biology. Yet many countries in the region lack the necessary data and core capacities to keep their populations and economies safe from emerging health crises.

Dr. Ashish K. Jha is dean of Brown University School of Public Health and a contributing Globe Opinion writer.

It’s easy to feel like the United States is losing ground in public health. Policies and actions from federal health leaders have fractured trust, undermined science, and disrupted essential services. This past year brought funding cuts to core health programs, the spread of dubious science, and the use of food benefits and health care as bargaining chips in political negotiations. The country urgently needs a course correction before the story of public health in America becomes one of steady decline.

The four governments of the United Kingdom responded during the COVID-19 pandemic. But they did “too little, too late,” to effectively stop the virus from spreading during a critical moment in time, according to a national inquiry published this week.

“This lack of urgency and the huge rise in infections made a mandatory lockdown inevitable,” the inquiry report explained. “It should have been introduced one week earlier. Modelling shows that in England alone there would have been approximately 23,000 fewer deaths in the first wave up until 1 July 2020.”

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The best books of 2025

Fair Doses: An Insider’s Story of the Pandemic and the Global Fight for Vaccine Equity. By Seth Berkley. University of California Press; 408 pages; $29.95 and £25

The story of vaccines, as told by an infectious disease epidemiologist. During the covid-19 pandemic, Seth Berkley fought against political resistance and nationalism to help distribute 2bn vaccines across the world.

(TNND) — Most Americans are confident that childhood vaccines are safe and effective.

But new polling shows many Americans are skeptical of the shots. And there are gaps in sentiment along demographic and political lines.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted last month and published Tuesday found 63% of Americans have high confidence in the effectiveness of childhood vaccines.

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Last week, the two top officials at the National Institutes of Health—the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research—debuted a new plan to help Americans weather the next pandemic: getting everyone to eat better and exercise.

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Environmentalism has typically focused on outdoor air quality, but climate change is pushing more people indoors more of the time, even as airborne pathogens and wildfire smoke challenge indoor air quality. I discuss the fight for better indoor air with Dr. Georgia Lagoudas, who recently coordinated a global pledge declaring it a basic human right. We dig into what pollutes indoor air, the technologies that can keep it clean, and the enormous social and economic benefits clean air in schools.

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Meet the heroes keeping global progress alive

On a Friday morning in October, about 100 high school and college students gathered in a Utah ballroom to play a game. Some students were assigned specific roles and given costumes to wear. “Government officials” slung ties over their T-shirts; “store clerks” sported aprons; and a trio of “journalists” wore fedoras and carried fake microphones.

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The United States may be heading into its second severe flu season in a row, driven by a mutated strain called subclade K that’s behind early surges in the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan.

Last winter’s season was extreme, too. The US had its highest rates of flu hospitalizations in nearly 15 years. At least 280 children died of influenza, the highest number since pediatric death numbers were required to be shared in 2004.

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A physician–scientist involved in the equitable-access initiative examines its achievements and discusses what can be done better when the world faces the next pandemic.

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